


Desire Lines

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Malta, Spoilers or mentions of S7 episodes and Morse episode Promised Land, Takes place after Down Among the Fearful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:39:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another life he would go with Lewis to visit walled cities and catacombs and cliff edge temples to an ancient goddess.  They would, in this rambling daydream, pick figs growing wild and live a lifetime untouched by murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desire Lines

The town is built on the banks of an agate blue bay and rises from the harbour in inclining terraces. James parks their rental car outside the police station on a gradient so steep Lewis has him stick a rock under one of the tires.

Constable Josie Fenech has been assigned to the case, and they walk with her to meet Censu Attard’s mother. The houses they pass have tall, closed balconies with blinds drawn down against the leaden heat of late afternoon. They have left their jackets and ties in the car and still suffer while Josie seems immune to the weather in skirt and blouse, her long, dark hair swept up. 

They pass a guest house, named The Marsa which overlooks the promenade and harbour. It is built from the sandy limestone common throughout the island but is larger than the nearby houses and made in a grander style. 

“We should stay here, sir,” James says. They have been put up near Valletta, not far from the airport but this is where they need to be.

Lewis considers and nods. “Go and book us a couple of rooms.”

Their colleague greets the plan with enthusiasm. She knows the owners, a quiet young couple with a grandmother bustling in the kitchen and a toddler at their feet. She negotiates not two rooms, but a suite at the top of the building. James is not sure how he feels about this, but everything is settled before any objection can be formed and they are on their way.

Rita Attard’s house is a street away. She leads them into a kitchen cooled by thick stone walls and a marble floor. She offers cold drinks and they sit at her dining table.

Framed pictures of her son at different ages occupy walls and surfaces. He had been a doctor with a general practice in North Oxford until his murder and, in one of the photographs, he stands with his parents outside the Bodleian in graduating robes.

The investigation into Censu’s murder has led them to the Maltese islands, to a dispute about an inheritance and a pair of missing cousins. Rita’s accented English, like everyone’s they have met so far, is perfect. She tells them she has no doubts about what happened. She accepts her nephews, Spiro and Freddy, did not plan to kill her only child but they are ‘rough’ with bad tempers and would turn to violence if they did not get their way.

This accords with the working scenario. Nothing was found to suggest the attack was premeditated. It happened in Censu’s garden where three fingerprint covered beer bottles were left on the patio table and the weapons were the first gardening tools to come to hand.

The body lay for a night and a day before it was discovered but then the connection to the brothers was quickly made. The delay gave the two time to take their scheduled flights home and disappear.

The brothers both live a few streets from their aunt and uncle and the three police officers call on first one and then the other. They find their wives home with a collection of children. A small girl stares up at James in mute wonder and cannot be distracted.

“I know how you feel, lass,” Lewis tells her.

The wives both claim to believe the brothers are still in the UK and not to have heard from either. The houses will have to be searched but the necessary formalities could, Josie says, take a day or two given the foreign angle.

“The money should have been theirs,” Emilia, one of the wives announces, unexpectedly offering a motive. “The boys slaved for that old man their whole life and he left them nothing except the workshop. He gave all the money to Censu who never lifted his fingers. He didn’t need the money like we do.”

By now it is early evening and they finish for the day. James drives back to the assigned hotel to collect their cases and check out and when he returns Lewis is in the high-walled garden of the Marsa having a drink with some of the other guests. 

He takes their cases upstairs to the suite. It is a self-contained flat with a living room, a kitchenette and two bedrooms. The living room opens out to a stately, stone balcony overlooking the harbour. From there he watches a tourist boat sailing silkily out to sea.

James leaves the master bedroom for Lewis and takes the one with the three single beds. He considers going downstairs and asking if there is another room he can have, using the size of the beds as an excuse. He decides to make the best of it and not offend anyone. It will only be for a day or two and there is enough room that he can prowl about when he can’t sleep without disturbing his inspector. 

“This is nice,” he says when Lewis comes up a few minutes later.

“Don’t pretend you’re not horrified,” Lewis says. “I saw your face.”

“Nothing personal, sir,” he says, though this is not exactly true. 

They take turns showering (‘after you, sir’), then change into casual clothes to join the locals and tourists strolling the harbour-side.

The cafes and shops have opened after the afternoon break and they stop at a pizzeria. Over cold beers Lewis talks about the overseas trips he took with Morse, one to a remote corner of Australia. He describes that New South Wales case, which ended in a hostage situation and a shootout on a railway track, as ‘tricky’. James raises an eyebrow. 

“All right, bloody terrifying is what it was. One of the local police dead, the little girl running for her life, her mum running straight into the line of fire after her. Morse was covered in blood and I thought he’d been hit too. It was a miracle he wasn’t, it was like the OK Corral. I’d said it was too risky but there was no telling him when he got an idea in his head.” 

James sees that moment reviving in Lewis’s eyes and he shares, in his gut, the familiar sick fear, the burst of adrenaline, the certainty of disaster. When the pizza arrives his stomach won’t contemplate it.

*~*~*

That night, back at The Marsa, he is at the small table out on the balcony with a pile of guidebooks he found in the living room.

He imagines another life where country paths lead down to a midnight blue sea and flowers growing in rock crevices open to the sun. In this other life he would go with Lewis to visit walled cities and catacombs and cliff edge temples to an ancient goddess. They would, in this rambling daydream, pick figs growing wild and live a lifetime untouched by murder.

Lewis comes out of his bedroom sometime after three. James is discomfited by the sight of his governor in neat white pyjamas heading for the bathroom for a pee. His hair is standing up suggesting he is having trouble sleeping too. Perhaps they should have stayed in the little patch of air conditioned Arctic at their official hotel. 

Lewis gets a glass of water and comes over, pushing open the mosquito screen doors. He casts a sceptical eye over his sergeant, who is smoking in his underwear and t-shirt, sprawled across two chairs and drinking brandy from a miniature bottle he discovered in the fridge.

“You found a bit of fresh air, did you?” Lewis says.

“Mostly just a load of mosquitos.” The night is muggy; outside only theoretically more bearable than in.

Lewis looks out at the view. Though it is never just looking with DI Lewis. He will take note of everything he sees and file the report in some vast, internal case file; the murmur of the black sea, a skinny, brown dog restlessly asleep on the flat roof of a neighbouring building, the points of light from the other side of the horseshoe of harbour.

“It would be good to see a bit of the country,” Lewis says sitting across from James and leafing through one of the books. “I had an uncle here in the war. I wouldn’t mind getting to a few of the places he was always on about. Mind you, most of them wouldn’t be in the guidebook.” He puts it aside. “Tomorrow we’re going to have to do some proper police work. Someone might have seen those two geniuses or know where they’re likely to be.”

James anticipates the wearying slog from door to door, “I’ve got to get a hat of some sort.”

“And some of that factor fifty. I suspect we’re not evolved for this climate.”

Eventually Lewis yawns and gets up, “Night, James.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Don’t sit up all night, go to bed. You look bloody knackered.”

No one has sent him to bed since his days in the seminary so he’s surprised to find himself doing as he’s told. He doesn’t sleep, he hadn’t expected to, but lies dozing through the remaining hours of night until sunrise and the accompanying noises of the village; the barking and shouting and slamming, give him an excuse to get up. 

He goes outside, unshaven, uncombed, in jeans and the t-shirt he passed the night in and crosses to the harbour road to smoke and watch the early traffic of fishing boats coming in to moor. The heat is already descending but for now the seaweed stained air holds a damp chill. He throws down the cigarette and starts to walk, then he finds himself running, hard and fast, surprised by a reserve of banked energy, until the paved road turns abruptly to scrub. He scrambles down to the beach over tumbling rock, splashing through salt pans filling and emptying with the tidal wash, stopping at the tide line and dropping to his knees.

Tradition has Malta as the island of St Paul’s shipwreck. Paul found shelter here and when James lets the waves, foaming and frothing on their steepest trajectory wash over him he feels he will be sheltered too. As if he could wear the island as a talisman and finally be safe. 

When he returns he is late and the sun has started to scorch the ground. Lewis is in the garden with Josie who has arrived with a long list of names. He looks up sharply as James comes in and stares as though he has never seen him before.

He goes upstairs to shave and shower and dress for work before joining Lewis and Josie for breakfast. The pastries, fruit, cheeses and Italian hams are too much. Bread and black coffee are all he can manage and Lewis doesn’t miss this either.

*~*~*

Four hours later James’ suit clings to him, there is grit behind his contact lenses and he has run out of water. He never did get a hat and the way he keeps daydreaming about shedding his clothes and diving into the ocean he wonders if he’s got sunstroke.

He and Josie have paired up to take the local contacts, while Lewis and another constable drive to neighbouring towns and villages. Between them they speak with the extended family, friends, customers and the residents of two streets. They meet back at the station to compare notes.

The Maltese want to talk, he’s never met a group of people so uniformly willing to speak and it’s been an interesting morning. Once you get used to hearing the language, a softly Semitic tongue, you realise these are not arguments but the normal tone of discourse and James learns to say ‘Bon Ju’ and ‘grazzi’ and even ‘Ciao’ without feeling self-conscious. 

No one knows where Spiro and Freddy are. They drink in a bar one of their friends has set up in his garage and they go hunting legally and illegally near Mtahleb in the west of the island. Everyone thinks they are on the cliffs there now, in the little stone hut they use when they stay overnight. Even though the police have already checked it twice and questioned the nearest neighbours. No one knows of anywhere else they might go to hide.

As the country starts its siesta, James and Lewis wordlessly agree to go back to the guest house and take a break for a couple of hours. 

They buy pastizzi for lunch. The little pies filled with ricotta cheese are too heavy and greasy for James, though Lewis is happy enough with them. Lewis then takes another shower and announces he is going for a nap.

Before long James finds himself listening to snoring from behind the closed door of Lewis’ bedroom. His exhaustion sits like a knot in his stomach, like a clenched fist behind his eyes but sleep still eludes him. He decides to leave a note for Lewis and take a bus to the capital which was to be their next stop anyway.

*~*~*

Valletta is a network of sixteenth century streets on a narrow strip of island. Built as a fortress, James remembers, but carrying its past gracefully in windswept, sun-washed stone.

Conscious of having spent too long outside on stepped streets in the unforgiving heat, he looks for somewhere to catch his breath. The shops in Valletta are mostly open as are the grand public buildings and he comes across the cathedral on its own small square.

The inside comes as a surprise after the island’s simple, practical beauty. It is ornate, baroque, saturated with colour, feverishly telling too many stories. His stomach lurches in response but, rather than take this as a warning, he goes in search of the paintings by Caravaggio he remembers from his reading are here.

There are two, painted in Malta by the artist while, like Spiro and Freddy, on the run from a murder charge. He finds them in a small chapel and is faced unprepared by the looming darkness of the Beheading of St John the Baptist. The postage stamp sized photograph he had seen in one of the guidebooks did not do it justice; it did not reach into his soul as the vast original does.

It is a horror ejected from some tormented corner of the artist’s consciousness. The saint is on the ground, a puddle of his blood already spilled, his executioner standing over him, blade in hand to finish his task. Salome holds ready an empty platter and minor characters look on, enthralled and appalled by the spectacle. Together through the centuries the players wait, forever on the brink of the fatal moment, the catastrophe, the axe falling.

The axe falling, the syringe puncturing the skin, the fire engulfing the house. 

Suddenly he is gripping the alter rail. The figures start to blur, his neck and back prickle with sweat, flies knock frantically against the windows of his mind. He feels a hand on his arm and turns to find a man of about his own age looking at him in concern.

When he comes to a moment later, he is sitting in one of the pews a few steps from the painting with the stranger next to him, a hand lightly on his back.

“Perhaps some water, detective,” he says. “Come.”

The café is behind the cathedral and has no other customers. It is an old place with nicotine faded murals of Maltese scenes on the wall and the inevitable Catholic iconography accumulating behind the counter. The man works there and he guides him to a booth near where an air conditioner ticks and chugs. Feeling foolish he puts his head in his hand until the water arrives.

“The fear of something, it is worse than the thing itself, no?” The man says when he returns and sits opposite. “It was the only painting Caravaggio ever signed and he signed it in St John’s blood, as though he foresaw his own approaching death.”

James looks at the speaker properly for the first time. He is Maltese in the way he is starting to think of as classically Maltese; built like Lewis, with a sturdy body but with dark hair and olive, tanned skin.

“You know who I am?” He asks, finally catching up with the conversation.

The man grins, “I apologise. My name is Francesco. I followed you into the cathedral to invite you for coffee. I am another member of the family, just in case you think you have seen all. Rita is my father’s cousin and the family is speaking of nothing else.”

“But, how did –?“

“You look like an English detective. Sherlock Holmes. I think you are the tall one.”

James laughs, “A good guess.”

“It is unbelievable,” Francesco declares. “Those two boys have ruined the family, poor Auntie Rita and Uncle Joe. Have you found them yet?”

“Not yet.” He tries to drag himself back to the case. “Any idea where to look?”

“Mtahleb. Where they hunt, definitely. You won’t find them anywhere else.”

“It’s the first place the police looked.”

He makes a heavenward gesture, an expression, accompanied by a tut, which James recognises from this morning’s interviews as polite doubt.

“You should look around there,” he insists. “And you can be sure none of the family would have them. Censu helped us all one way or another. Those two are nothing but trouble. The grandfather only employed them in his business to keep them from going out stealing.”

James is listening but his mind is still rolling dangerously and he is staring at Francesco’s forearms. They are muscular, like Lewis’ when he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt in the police station earlier. Francesco is looking at him questioningly, speculatively. Dear God, get a grip Hathaway. He closes his eyes for a moment.  
“Sorry. My head’s all over the place. I don’t know how anyone functions in this heat.”

Francesco shrugs at the deserted room, “We don’t. You sit here and recover. Do you want coffee?”

He brings James an espresso and, to his dismay, more pastizzi before disappearing to attend to a group of elderly Germans who have also come in from the cathedral but seem to have coped a lot better than he did with the whole experience. He quickly eats the pie in the hope it will keep him on his feet for the afternoon and wonders if he is developing a taste for them or having some kind of symptom. 

*~*~*

The central police station where CID is based is just outside the old city walls.

“What have you been up to?” Lewis asks as he and Josie get out of their air conditioned rental to find him just arriving hot and sweaty all over again, having taken a few wrong turns.

He tells him about the Caravaggio and how he has become known as ‘the tall one’. He doesn’t mention the odd turn he took and also keeps quiet about picking up men in the cathedral. He gets an appraising look anyway; the one that means his inspector is debating whether he should be worried about him or not. A look he has become familiar with lately.

They spend the afternoon on paperwork and in going through fat files detailing the two brothers’ previous arrests and convictions with Josie patiently translating. There are endless, though minor, bits of theft and vandalism, some violence, a lot of it to do with illegally shooting at migrating birds for which Spiro received a prison sentence. They have never been suspected of murder before, not of a human at least.

“We can normally easily find them,” Josie sighs, picking up yet another arrest report. “They go to the bar, they hunt, they go home, they don’t disappear into the air. Perhaps they have taken a ferry to Gozo or Catania.”

“But you’re monitoring ports and airports, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“We should go to the cliffs,” James says. He is sure of it now.

“The ones that have been searched twice already?”

He shrugs, “Not by us.”

They finish for the day and Josie invites them for dinner with her family. They pass the evening with her, her husband, five year old son and neighbours, eating on the flat roof of their apartment block. 

“It might not be such a bad life,” Lewis says when the family are all briefly downstairs after dinner. He is examining a shelf of tall cactus plants, one blooming miraculously with vivid red desert flowers.

James looks out at the roof top vista of TV aerials and washing lines, at the sun painting the sky in burnt orange brush strokes as it sinks behind the dome of a village church. And you can, when it is like this, see living here; getting to feel at home with the constant presence of the horizon, with the rhythms imposed by the climate. Lewis is looking so contented James starts to fear he will announce plans to retire here.

He reads him, then, as he would any unreliable witness. “Oh give over, I’m not going anywhere, you daft so and so.”

He needs to get some sleep. Either he has suddenly lost all his defences or pastizzi makes everyone psychic. But he laughs, “That’s a relief, I’d hate to think of you being known as ‘the short one’ for the rest of your days.”

*~*~*

That night, he closes his eyes for two dreamless hours and then is wide awake. He settles himself on the balcony with another selection from the Marsa library; a compendium of Maltese poetry translated into English. It is full of unexpected darkness for such a sunlit country; almost every poem awash with blood and tragedy. The island has suffered through the centuries with more than its share of occupations, sieges and wars. It is a fortress with cannon-blasted walls but, kindred soul, not all its scars are visible. 

Lewis is awake before sunrise. He pads to the bathroom and then the kitchenette from where James hears the kettle bubbling into life. A few minutes later he is placing two mugs of tea on the table. 

“Genius,” James says.

Lewis eyes the thick volume James is studying, “What have you got hold of now?”

“The sun bakes snakes in their crevices,” James reads. “Everything boils like the entangled entrails of volcanoes.”

“Volcano entrails?”

“I think it might have lost something in the translation.”

“But basically, it’s bloody hot. Well, write what you know, I suppose.”

Lewis takes his tea and looks out over the balcony. The neighbour dog is awake and gets up on his hind legs to greet him. You can’t see his tail but it is clear he is wagging it. Another creature smitten with Lewis; James can sympathise. The dog lets out a joyful bark.

“You settle down, now,” Lewis tells him. And he does, instantly sitting, then curling into a circle to sleep. “This not sleeping business,” Lewis says turning from the balcony. “Is it just here, or is it a permanent thing?”

“Are you talking to me or the dog?” 

“And you’re not eating and that’s not like you.”

James reaches for his cigarettes and lights one. This is why he didn’t want to share accommodation with the man.

His sleep patterns have been unreliable since those awful years when he was first made sergeant. But since Katherine Dutta attacked him with a syringe of Etorphine something has been knocked off track and he seems to have lost the knack of sleep altogether; never managing more than a couple of hours in a night, as though he has forgotten how.

And forgotten how to eat or listen to music, or read anything of substance, or have an unselfconscious conversation with anyone who isn’t Inspector Lewis. As though he did die in that marketplace but his body hasn’t got the message across to his mind yet.

“I sometimes found sleeping tablets useful after Val died,” Lewis says.

Sometimes whiskey helps and doesn’t cloud his waking thoughts in the way tablets do but he’s not about to alarm Lewis with that admission.

“All right,” Lewis sighs. “You don’t have to talk to me.”

“I’m fine, sir,” he says resorting to a plain lie. “It’s better when I don’t feel like I’m being spit roasted.”

Lewis sees through him, of course. “I know you’ve had some bad luck on the job over the years. Maybe a bit of time away from it would help.”

He catches James’ look of alarm, “I just mean a holiday, a proper one, not three days staring at the ceiling in your flat. A few weeks doing whatever it is you do. Maybe you could stay on when we’re done here. There are enough churches and whatnot to keep you quiet for a while.”

He had wanted to get away. After the Reuben Beattie case he had begun to think his choice was to leave Oxford for a few weeks or resign. He had been on the point of applying for leave to do some volunteering in Kosovo when Censu Attard’s body was found.

“All right,” Lewis says again, signalling surrender. “Think about it.”

“I will. Thank you.”

James goes back to the book while Lewis finishes his tea.

“Right,” Lewis says, getting up. “I think I’ll try and catch a couple of hours sleep before we have to get going.”

“Show off.”

“Anything else interesting in there? Limericks, something with a rhyme.”

“Not exactly.” He flicks back a few pages to something that caught his eye. “I like this though. ‘I scribble my name in the spring sand, and wait for the sea, to wash it away.’”

“Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“I think it means you should be tranquil and go with the world, not always fight against it.”

“Good advice up to a point.” Lewis gathers the empty cups and pauses on his way in, “Just make sure you don’t get washed away too.”

James watches him go, “I’m trying, sir,” he says quietly. “I’m doing the best I can.”

*~*~*

The necessary warrants come through the next morning and they spend a fruitless few hours searching the brother’s homes, workshop and favourite bar. Lewis wants to get their wives in for more formal questioning. If Spiro and Freddy are still in the country then someone is helping them, bringing them food and information. He had hoped their searches would yield evidence to challenge the two women with, but it is yet another dead end. 

“Right then,” he says when they start work again in the afternoon. “Mtahleb.”

Josie expertly navigates twisting, single lane roads through a landscape of gentle undulations. She says in winter and spring this is one of the greenest parts of the island but now, in August, the drive is through scorched, tinder-dry country.

The hut Spiro and Freddy use is on an exposed cliff where a blistering wind blows. It is empty and there is no sign of recent occupation. The three of them separate to search the area but when they meet again after half an hour they have found nothing. There is nothing to do but drive back. Lewis and Josie make their way to the car while James finishes a cigarette.

The ground on top of the cliff, the thin layer of soil where tiny flowers and windswept shrubs bravely cling, is mapped with paths. They are called ‘desire lines’; tracks created not by deliberate planning but by the feet of the humans and animals taking the simplest route to where they want to get to over the course of lifetimes.

Most of the paths make sense; from the hut to the road, from the hut to the slope winding down to the nearest farm, from the road to another hut and clump of shrubbery. But one path, nothing but a dusty trail compared to the others, is inexplicable to James. It seems to lead to a sheer drop from the cliff edge. He goes over to take a look.

There is a loud bang and Lewis shouts his name. He stumbles and the world disappears into a black smudge.

He wakes to find himself looking up into the cloudless blue of the sky. A hundred rocks and stones and bits of stick jab into his back but his head rests on the cushion of Lewis’ hand.

“Just take it easy, James, you’re all right.” 

Josie is at the cliff edge talking rapidly in Maltese on her phone and there is a stinging pain next to his ear, a wet heat.

“What -?”

“Spiro and Freddy have a hideout beneath the cliff,” Lewis tells him. “You got a bit close and they shot at you.”

“In the head? The toe-rags.” 

“It just gave you a haircut, you’ll be fine.” He helps him sit up as Josie finishes her call and comes over. She drops on to her knees beside him.

“Are you all right?” 

“Yes, thanks. Where are they?”

“There is an outcrop, a ledge. They used it to get up on the other side. I called for help. They can’t get far.” Her phone rings and she excuses herself to answer it.

James gets to his feet and, with Lewis firmly gripping his arm, they go to peer over into the cave beneath the cliffs. It is invisible from above until you get this close, concealed by the irregularity of the cliff face and only accessible through some minor acrobatics.

“That’s a really good hiding place,” James grudgingly admits.

“Talk about snakes in their crevices,” Lewis says deciding he doesn’t want James this near to the cliff edge and steering him back to the car.

Josie has summoned an ambulance which James feels is unnecessary. Lewis gives him a ‘don’t even think about it’ look before he can voice this opinion and comes with him. He waits at the hospital until he is sure the injury is just the graze it appears to be and goes back to work. At Lewis’ insistence, James returns to the Marsa afterwards. He might have argued the point if he hadn’t been feeling so wretched.

He wakes later to a fabulously awful headache, the dull throb of the wound beneath its dressing, a bruised back and an unfamiliar hum which he eventually establishes is not coming from inside his head. There are two fans slowly oscillating beside the bed. One had been in the room anyway though he had been too exhausted even to switch it on when he came in, and the second had been in Lewis’ room. The window is open as well, the mosquito screen fitted and a glass of water left on the bedside table. He almost cries.

His phone tells him it is 1am. He has slept for six hours, which he can’t quite believe. He is conscious of a slight dizziness as he gets out of bed and grateful, now his sense of outrage has diminished, it isn’t a lot worse.

He crosses the apartment to visit the loo and splash water on his face and when he is on his way to the kitchenette to investigate his chances of getting a cup of tea Lewis comes in from the balcony.

“Go and sit down, I’ll make it.”

He gratefully takes his usual place at the table outside and lights a cigarette. “Did you catch them?” He calls.

“Yep, Spiro and Freddy are locked up in Valletta. Do you want some soup? Or cake? These biscuits look good.”

“Sir?”

“I came back to a pile of food on the doorstep. Grandma says they’re gifts from neighbours who heard what happened. They don’t take kindly to visitors getting shot at. Either that or the entire population thinks you’re too thin. Oh look, pie.”

“Can’t I just have tea?”

Lewis makes the tea and brings it outside with some foil wrapped homemade cake. 

“Please, just eat something. I thought a gust of wind was going to have you off that cliff today even before the Attard boys tried it. I was going to tell you to put stones in your pockets.”

“Yes, sir,” he says with a smile. He puts out his cigarette and takes a slice. Something seems to have unclenched in him anyway, and he could almost be hungry.

He sits forward because it is easier on his back and Lewis spots the gesture. 

“And we’re feeling -?” He prompts.

“Not bad, actually.” The air seems clearer tonight and there is something that might be mistaken for a breeze if he didn’t know better. “So what happened?”

“Immigration Section caught them trying to get on the catamaran to Sicily.”

“Which is what they should have done days ago.”

“Criminal masterminds they are not. Still, they gave us a run for our money. Now the Maltese want to charge them with shooting at police officers so it’s going to get even more complicated. But we can interview tomorrow, if you’re up to it.”

“Oh, don’t worry; I’m looking forward to it.”

“What made you look where you did?” Lewis asks. “Josie thinks you can see through solid rock.”

“There was a path that didn’t seem to lead anywhere,” he says, not quite bold enough to say ‘desire line’ in Lewis’ presence. He closes his eyes. “Humans and animals forge paths for a reason, it had to lead somewhere. Might have been a goat track though.”

“We heard a gunshot and you dropped like a stone. I thought -”

He opens his eyes and looks at his inspector. He is still there, he sees, on the cliff edge in that moment. There is no point saying, ‘I’m fine, I didn’t die.’ Lewis knows this on every level except the important one.

He remembers him frozen to the spot in the marketplace waiting to find out if his sergeant was going to die at his feet, remembers being held back from a Jericho fire in Lewis’ iron grip. 

He dips his head, offering it to him until he feels Lewis’ hand, warm and dry, settling on the unbroken topography of his skull. 

When the hand withdraws, as it soon does, he doesn’t raise his head. It takes a while, maybe a minute for the hand to come back, to gently push fingers into his hair, to rest there. Then it has gone again and in another moment he is alone on the balcony.

*~*~*

They interview Spiro and Freddy in Valletta with a local sergeant sitting in. It takes the morning but they get confessions.

As suspected, the attack on Censu had been an impulsive act. The brothers had recently discovered their grandfather’s will had left them with just the workshop and tools but none of the money they had been counting on to clear their debts. Apart from small amounts to his own two children, it had all gone to favourite grandchild, Censu. They had flown to Oxford to persuade him to part with some of it. He refused and things had got out of hand.

When questioned about shooting at James, they claim the bullet was meant to go over his head to warn him off while they got away. How were they to know he was a kind of giant? Thus, it was James’ fault for being careless enough to have had a teenage growth spurt.

“I’ve been telling you that for years,” Lewis says.

James makes a few phone calls home. A CPS solicitor is to be dispatched to help sort out the legal complexities and, bar the paperwork, the case is closed. Lewis, to his reasonably well-concealed dismay, then finds himself invited to lunch and a tour of the facilities by an Assistant Commissioner. James makes himself invisible before someone decides he ought to be invited too. 

He does not see Lewis again during the working day and, in the late afternoon, he returns to Valletta’s main thoroughfare, Republic Street. He had spotted a bookshop when he was last here and in it he finds what he is looking for. He takes the book to the café behind the Cathedral. Francesco is serving at a table and smiles as James walks in.

“The tall one returns,” he says and invites James to sit. He brings cappuccino over and for himself, a bottle of fizzy orange.

James slides across the book of reproductions of Caravaggio’s paintings, “I wanted to thank you for helping me the other day and to apologise for the general weirdness.”

Francesco waves the apology away and leafs through the book, “Thank you, but this is beautiful. So you caught Freddy and Spiro?”

“Also thanks to you.”

“And I heard they shot you,” he says quietly.

“As you can see, bullets just bounce off this skull.”

“I thought I hadn’t warned you properly, I felt a bit, you know, responsible.”

“No, come on, these things happen,” he says. It feels like the profoundest of insights.

“Well, I am glad you came and I can see you are well.” He smiles, “I’ve got a break, come for a walk. I can show you somewhere beautiful. It won’t take long.”

He puts the book behind the counter and they head out, walking back toward the city gates but taking a turning toward the sea. They come to a small park of cultivated flowers and trees where stray cats sleep in the shade of statues. Francesco leads him past dusty palms to a colonnaded walkway. A harbour stretches still and silver below.

“This is the Grand Harbour,” Francesco says, a sweep of his hand encompassing the view. “And you can see on the other side what we call the three cities.”

They sit on a wall, beneath an arch, looking down over tangled streets of crowding buildings. Beside him, Francesco spins stories of fortress cities built by warrior monks and he has a sense of a burden lifting. It is a weight far older than the one placed on his shoulders by Spiro and Freddy Attard, or even Katherine Dutta. On this island of sand-swept parishes, fortress walls are breached and his name, carefully inscribed, washes away to nothing.

His phone buzzes. Lewis has sent him a message.

‘I know you were hiding. I’ll remember this when it’s time for your appraisal.’

‘Thank you, sir. I learnt from the best.’

‘Where are you?’

He turns to Francesco, “Where am I?”

“Upper Barrakka garden.”

He sends a reply telling Lewis to come and to bring ice cream.

Francesco hops off the wall, getting ready to leave, “I have to go but I finish work at eight. If you wanted to meet for a drink or something?” 

His meaning is unmistakeable. James never knows what to do when this happens. For a moment, because of this strange weightlessness, this unexpected collapse of a long-held citadel in the fortifications of his soul and because Francesco is lovely his impulse is to accept, to test the possibilities of what he is apparently offering. Then he thinks of Lewis’ hand in his hair last night, leaving behind its ghostly memory, its encrypted message, and does what he always does, which is stammer out apologies.

Francesco stops him. “No problem. It’s no problem.” He offers his hand to James to shake and then leans across and kisses him, letting their lips briefly brush. Francesco grins and walks away with a hand raised in farewell, leaving James laughing.

Lewis arrives with ice cream and hands him a wrapped cone, “You’re the bagman, it’s your job to get the lollies in.”

“Cheers, sir.”

He wanders off to examine the harbour view and the garden and when he comes back he says, “You know, I think this was one of the places my uncle used to pick women up during the war.”

“It is a good spot.”

He moves his irresponsibly long legs to make space for Lewis to lean against the wall, “What’s up with you?” Lewis asks.

“Nothing, why?” James realises he is smiling, which is bound to be unnerving.

“Go on, what’s the matter? You’re looking dopey.”

He wonders what would happen if he told him and the words are out before he’s even finished the thought.

“I’ve just kissed a local.”

Lewis’ instantly concealed expression makes James wish he hadn’t spoken and then intrigues him, “Will you be seeing her again?” He asks.

“Him,” he corrects.

“Him then,” Lewis says without pause but colouring a little. “It might do you a bit of good.”

“It was nothing. How was your afternoon?”

“How do you think it was? The upper echelons are the same all over. But they’re a decent lot, I suppose. Oh, I’ve got something for you from the Commissioner.” He takes a box from his pocket. “With grateful thanks from the people of Malta.”

It is a tie pin bearing a silver filigree Maltese cross.

“That’s-, wow,” he says. “Did you get one?”

“No, but I didn’t get shot at.” James looks up from his tie pin to find Lewis staring at him as though he is a particularly perplexing piece of evidence. “So this lad -”

“Honestly, sir. It was nothing. I met him in the cathedral the other day. He - I wasn’t well - he helped me out.” 

“Then I approve of him.” A crowd of small shouting children comes hurtling by but Lewis’ gaze doesn’t falter.

“You know I’m not looking for anyone,” James says, and then meeting that gaze. “Anyone else.”

Lewis is still for as long as it takes for peace to descend. Then he throws the remains of his ice away, “We should get going, James. I said we’d take Josie and the family out tonight. Are you up for that?”

“Yes. Yes, good idea.”

“But we have to be early because of the boy,” Lewis is looking at James’ hand, the one not holding an ice cream, which is shaking.

He starts off toward the gate. “Apparently there’s a decent seafood place down the coast. Though I might be called upon to eat octopus, and that rarely ends well.”

James slips off the wall and follows Lewis from the park.

*~*~*

After dinner they walk back to The Marsa. Lewis is speaking to his daughter on the phone and, although it is not late, he retreats upstairs when James stops for a drink in the guest house garden.

He has heard that Rita wants to see them so he walks up to her house. He has coffee with her, her husband and sister, awkwardly accepting their thanks. He hardly knows what to say in the face of their grief, missing as he always does in these situations, Lewis’ easy way with people. 

When he returns, Lewis’ bedroom door is closed and he takes a book out on to the balcony. It is not even midnight; there is a long night ahead.

*~*~*

Lewis comes in at about one. He had not been in his room after all, but walking by the harbour. “A few things to think through,” he says. He comes outside with a bottle of Maltese wine and two glasses. “One of your well-wishers left it.”

James opens and pours the wine, white and fridge-cold.

“Any good?” Lewis asks.

“Bouquet of limestone and undertones of cheese pie.”

Lewis is still preoccupied and doesn’t seem to hear. He stands looking out. There is a moon visible tonight, a wide, open sky of multiplying constellations and the brown dog silently gazes skyward.

“Those paths you were on about,” he says. “The ones that are made because they’re used.”

“They’re called desire lines,” James admits. “Sometimes urban planners go out after a new snowfall to see where people walk when their usual paths have vanished.”

“I can’t imagine snow anymore, can you? But I think we may be making – desire lines - to this balcony, wearing tracks into the tile.”

“I hope my restlessness hasn’t disturbed you, sir.”

“The boat has long sailed on that one, sergeant. I can’t remember when you didn’t disturb me.”

“And you’ve always kept me anchored.”

Lewis absorbs this for a moment.

“Have you thought anymore about staying on for a holiday?”

It is the thought of leaving that has not occurred to him. The existence of a world beyond this island is as yet unproven.

“Would you stay on too?” He asks.

“Something’s different,” Lewis says. “Something happened to you here.”

No shipwrecked saint, no beheaded Baptist, just a too-tall policeman wearing a path to his inspector’s door. He has written his name in blood and written it again in sand and at low tide all that remains is a wound healing into a thin, pale V for victory.

“Go on. Tell me.”

James stops to consider how to express in words the ceaseless jangle of his thoughts, “It comes down to realising I survived. I don’t think I really knew that before.”

“I’m not sure how I would have gone on if you hadn’t.” 

Lewis speaks so plainly it takes a moment to comprehend what he has declared. James is forming a reply, or trying to, when Lewis interrupts.

“I thought you were beautiful. Our first morning here, when you came in from the sea. You should know that.”

And powers of speech are lost. Lewis puts his hand around James’, the one he has holding his wine glass. They move together, though this is not new. Lines of desire, meeting, not crossing. James leans close and kisses him.

*~*~*

James is out on the balcony with his first cigarette of the day. They’ve slept late but he’s been downstairs to the kitchen and there are pastries and coffee left over from the guest house breakfast on the table.

He is listening to Lewis on the phone to CS Innocent. So much for a holiday, they are being summoned back to work. A body has been found. Not murdered, the man died of natural causes, but was discovered by Laura to have been recently embalmed with last offices performed.

“Cuts out the middle man, I suppose,” says Lewis.

The working theory is that he has been evicted from his coffin in favour of a less respectable corpse.

Lewis is pointing out to Innocent that neither of them have had more than a couple of days off since Christmas and, in case she’s forgotten, Hathaway nearly died. Again. It doesn’t seem to be making much of an impact.

“We’ve had two days,” Lewis says coming outside after finishing the call. “Even Morse used to let me have the occasional long weekend before he started badgering.”

James draws him down to a kiss, “Doesn’t matter.”

“Not to you, you’re a workaholic.” He sinks down into the seat next to James, “I wanted you to have a decent break.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.”

“Course you are, lad.” 

He’s not fooling anyone. He remembers whispered reassurances in the night, he remembers arms firmly holding him. Lewis is now privy to his nightmares; the edited highlights if not the whole Hammer double feature. But at least he’s sleeping (he’ll say, when Lewis gets round to mentioning it). Now he wants to stay awake, he can’t help but drift off; warm, replete, pressed against his partner’s side.

“Anyway,” Lewis says. “We’re on a flight this afternoon.”

They won’t get to the walled city or the catacombs or the temples to the Neolithic goddess of abundance, goddess of secret joys. Which is not to say they haven’t embarked, in the sultry darkness of Lewis’ bedroom, on explorations of their own. And he is certain that goddess, whose name is lost to time, whose scent is wild figs and salty air, has passed through while they slept taking tribute of doorstep gifts in return for the cool memory of her healing touch.

 

End

 

September 2015


End file.
